Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Brought to you by the AdoptionDNA Community...DNAGedcom

I think most people know how highly I think of the work that the AdoptionDNA Community is doing. They are a proactive group of incredibly intelligent and talented individuals with connections to the adoption world who have banded together with a common cause - to give hope to all adoptees searching for their heritage. I am proud to say that I often collaborate with members of their community and can count a handful of them among my closest colleagues.

Fortunately, for the rest of us non-adoptees, this innovative work is starting to benefit us all. The methodology that they have created for adoption cases has recently resulted in many success stories and can be applied to most any relatively recent genealogical brick wall. The technology experts among them have created ways to streamline the work of autosomal DNA matching and analysis and are now offering to share this with the rest of the genetic genealogy community.

The New DNAGedcom Site













The new website DNAGedcom delivers some of the tools that are most often requested from the major DNA genealogy companies. In this first phase of development, developer Rob Warthen has recently enabled access for all users to the FTDNA Family Finder and 23andMe downloads (though he cautions users that, at this early stage, there may still be bugs to work out). Through DNAGedcom it is now possible to download a full list of your matches, including the matching segment data from both companies. Those of us who have worked extensively with autosomal DNA for genealogy, know what a huge time saver this is. For me, with over 1000 shares on my main account at 23andMe, it has saved me tens if not hundreds of hours.

Users are required to register to use the site, but it is a quick and easy process.

Create an Account

















For Family Tree DNA's Family Finder, this means that instead of downloading the matching segments from the Chromosome Browser five at a time, it can be done all at once. You can also download a file of "In Common With" matches, which formerly had to be checked and compiled one-by-one. To use the ICW tool, you still must assign each of your Family Finder matches to a specific relationship like "Distant Cousin" (which is certainly true for the vast number of our matches) until such time that FTDNA removes that requirement for their filter. (At the 2012 FTDNA Administrators' Conference, they announced their intention to do so.)

Family Tree DNA Tools















For 23andMe, this means that instead of downloading the matching segments for Family Inheritance Advanced three at a time, it is now possible to download a file with all the matching segment data for each of your matches that you are sharing genomes with all at once. If you have a single profile on your account, the Ancestry Finder matching files will also be downloaded. I usually integrate the public matches from the Ancestry Finder file with the Family Inheritance Advanced data to create a master spreadsheet of all available matching segments for each of the profiles I manage.

23andMe Tools














There is even a place to store your spreadsheets (.csv files up to 200 KB)!

Member Spreadsheet Storage















This website is still in the early development stages, but intends to continue to deliver the most often requested tools to the genetic genealogy community. In fact, there is already a full featured phase two version of the site with even more highly desirable capabilities in development. (Rob tells me that improving AncestryDNA's functionality is next on the list!) The site is currently run solely on donations and affiliate income. The website agreement can be found here and is linked to directly from the home page. Any problems with the site should be directed to support@dnagedcom.com.

There are lots of exciting plans in store over at DNAGedcom and I am thrilled to be joining the team that will be further developing this groundbreaking new site. So far, we are:

Robert Warthen - Chief Technology Officer
Karin Corbeil - Chief Operating Officer
Diane Harman-Hoog - President
James Kelley – Professional Technologist and Systems Programmer
Gaye Tannenbaum – Technology Advisor
Patty Drabing – Principal Researcher and Advisor
CeCe Moore – Genetic Genealogy Advisor

Those of you familiar with adoption search, may recognize the names of some of our top traditional search angels there. Their experience and expertise, combined with that of our very talented technology experts has made for a powerful team.

So, go check it out, but please don't crash the server! (JK - Rob tells me it is stable.)

14 comments:

  1. This is just wonderful. Thank you Rob!!!

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  2. Hi CeCe,

    Is there any possibility that the DNAGedcom site will "play nice" with results from Geno 2.0?

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  3. Awesome! One question, how does this handle accounts with multiple profiles? Does it download all of them in one file or each one in its own file? Also, will the AF data be downloaded for those with multiple profiles or will that be a separate thing?

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  4. Hi,
    This is Rob. I don't have an account on Geno 2.0 yet, but if I do, I'll look at what components we can use from that site. The long term goal is to INTEGRATE data from everywhere into a simple and easy to use portal.

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    1. Thanks, Rob! Appreciate all the countless hours of effort on this!

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  5. Thanks, Cece. Looking forward to using this site and sharing how it works and what I discover.

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  6. Great tool. My only concern is that the website is NOT encrypted. It should be using https! I certainly would use this website with public wifi.
    -- thetick

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  7. I was interested until i realized I had to give my passwords to my dna company accounts. That has caused me to back off. I have no problem uploading raw dna data from my computer like on Gedmatch. But giving direct access to my dna company accounts, by submitting my password, seems too risky.

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    1. Log into your websites and change your passwords. Log into dnagedcom and let it do its thing. Go back to the dna sites and changes passwords (back to originals if it makes it easier for you).

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  8. CeCe,
    So I did the download, entered the name of the account I wanted. For some reason it did 3 of the 6 accounts on my login for 23andme. I have three files for each account? Can you do a 'what to do next' blog please please please?!
    Thx!

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  9. I found one little bug when using this site with my FTDNA tests. Not all of the matches downloaded for me. I had to check each name against the master list to see if it transferred. About 15 did not -- which I added to my spreadsheet by doing the typical download of 5 at a time from FTDNA.

    Also, a few of the matches came down to the spread sheet without their names attached. But I was able to identify them on my match list since it showed the longest match length and if I had a few at that length I was able to see if the others were already named or go into FTDNA and examine results manually.

    Small inconvenience and not certain if it was a result of any internet hiccups since I do not have the most stable of connections.

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